Thinkspace is proud to present ‘The World Unseen and Those In Between’, the second solo show at our gallery from Portland based artist Andy Kehoe. This will be the first solo exhibition with the artist in our main gallery space, following ‘Into the Forest of Broken Dreams, which took place in our project room in the fall of 2007. ‘The World Unseen and Those In Between’ marks Kehoe’s biggest west coast exhibition to date.

This new series of oil and acrylic paintings on wood panel serve as an outlet for the artist to express his feelings of unrest and anxiety in this all too unstable world we live. Kehoe’s soft and enticing palette of autumnal colors provides the foundation for his work and allows the artist to explore his world view via the sincere human emotion that’s so prevalent in his timeless works. The beautiful yet desolate landscapes present in much of his work serve to capture the essence of human loneliness and the longing for a simpler time. Viewing his characters in their allegorical compositions brings one to think of how tiny we truly are compared with the vastness of mothernature. Much like the comics of his youth, Kehoe’s work is rich with undertones of unease and violence, yet this is all somehow masked by the artist’s talent for creating seemingly peaceful and serene scenes set in nature that hint at the mysteries of the unknown.

Of the show’s titles, the artist goes on to explain: “The World Unseen is a place where the spirits of the dead, the never living and the yet to be all reside. This world lies unnoticed to the living yet each world shapes the other. The thinnest of curtains separate the worlds and they perpetually intertwine and overlap. Some live between both worlds and are neither living nor dead, but something more fantastic and in some cases all the more horrible.”

Andy Kehoe “The World Unseen and Those In Between”

(main gallery)

Andy Kehoe was born and bred in the city of steel, Pittsburgh, PA. The artist now spends most of his days painting away in the attic of his new home located in the lush green surroundings of Portland, OR. The artist was bred on comics from an early age, finding an escape of sorts in the over stylized violence found within their delicate pages. Kehoe now fondly looks back on the endless hours he spent absorbing all the storybooks and comics he could lay his hands on, all the while doodling away on any scrap of paper within his reach. His paintings pull from these memories and are rich with a childlike innocence that recall a simpler time before the age of machines and big business.

Shortly after graduating from high school, Kehoe explored a number of different art schools before settling in to the illustration course at Parsons School of Design in NY. After dabbling in commercial illustration for a short time, Kehoe decided it was time to focus on his personal work, and he’s never looked back.

Kehoe’s work has shown the country over including such prestigious galleries as Jonathan LeVine (New York City), Nucleus Gallery (Los Angeles), Black Maria Gallery (Los Angeles), and Copro Gallery (Santa Monica, CA), as well as taking part in the Gen Art Vanguard Contemporary Art Fair during Art Basel 2008 in Miami, FL.